Increasing Climate Resilience Among Refugee & Immigrant Farmers in Kansas City and Beyond

Year one of the grant was spent co-creating Climate Resilience curriculum with Laura Lengnick - the first workshop is scheduled for Tuesday February 21st, 2023. We will invite both current farmers in the training program as well as graduates of the New Roots program. This first course will be seen as a pilot and revisions will be made to the course afterwards. We are thrilled about this content! Laura Lengnick has spent years teaching farmers about resilience, climate change & climate adaptation - however, making the curriculum appropriate for a English Language Learner audience was a challenge for Laura. We're excited that through this grant we are able to work with a local artist, Taylor Fourt, to make the education come to life visually! 

The workshop will be taught in both 2023 and 2024. Materials will be shared with similar programs for feedback, and once the curriculum is finalized, it will be shared more widely. 

Participant numbers are for the workshop held in February 2023 - any additional attendees in the following year will be added to that total.

The Season Extension curriculum is a new course we are adding to our educational offering in the program. Originally, we had a sub-award with Zac Hoppenstedt - a horticultural extension agent in an adjacent county at K-State Extension.  However, during year 1 of the grant, Zac had several life changes occur and he is no longer helping with the project nor employed by K-State. We have found a replacement content developer and educator, Mark Gawron of Crow's Nest Farm. Mark used to work for Cultivate KC as well, and has experience working with refugee and immigrant farmers. We are thrilled to develop with course with him and teach it later in 2023. Due to the change, we are bumping our Season Extension education to late summer/early fall - farmers will learn how to extend their season into the fall/winter. In preparation, Mark has been developing content, meeting with staff, and putting together supply lists to support farmers in adopting these practices. 

The Pest Management workshop was taught in 2022, but we are hoping to make revisions for teaching it in year 2 (2023). Mark Gawron will provide technical assistance and support in order to make this a successful workshop. This workshop topic has always been particularly challenging to identify the right timing - we want to offer workshops while farmers aren't too busy with the growing season, but if we provide it too early, there are no pests and the topic seems irrelevant. We will work on creating more visual hand out's that farmers can use as guides, and we will provide pest control supplies in the tool library for farmers to access 24/7. During the workshop we will aim to review the available resources with farmers. In 2022 we purchased seed for farmers to plan pollinator habitat in their plots, but we don't think the direct-seeding option was the most successful. We will likely try to pursue a mix of transplants and direct seeded crops for better establishment. There is local native plant nursery that we have a great relationship with and we are hopeful that we can purchase plants from them.

During the 2022 growing season, staff was able to purchase silage tarps for each farmer! Staff also created a simple visual "how to" guide for teaching farmers about how to best utilize the silage tarps. Of the 16+ farmers that received silage tarps, all of them used the rolls at some point throughout the season. We are thrilled and farmers were happy to spend less time manually weeding 🙂

In 2023 we plan to build on this practice by offering more education and suggestions for how to best manage weeds ecologically. We are aiming to teach the first weed management workshop in July (while the weeds are at their best, or worst!) with the support of Mark Gawron.

In 2022 we worked with Zac Hoppenstedt to think through some possible irrigation set-up's at farmer plots. Zac supported us in ordering some wobbler sprinkler set up's that we trialed with farmers who seeded fall cover crops - this was a great success and really aided the growth of cover crops! Mark Gawron is filling in for Zac in his absence and has hit the ground running. We are targeting March 2nd as the date of the Irrigation Workshop and Mark has already supported us in purchasing wobblers, headers, and drip tube set up's for farmer plots. The hope is to teach the workshop portion in early March and then set up several "field days" where farmers receive staff support in setting up their permanent irrigation systems. 

In November of 2022, New Roots farmers and staff headed up to St. Paul to attend the Emerging Farmers Conference. Farmers were thrilled to attend a farming conference that offered interpretation throughout, and where they were able to meet other refugee and immigrant growers from other parts of the country. Farmers were particularly interested in learning about season extension, government programs and grants, and flower production. The actual participant number above are for 2022 - we will add to these numbers after having attended again in 2023 (which is something that many farmers expressed interest in doing!). Additionally, our program staff is meeting with Big River Farms program staff to brainstorm how the conference can be more supportive of farmers with language barriers. 

When we initially wrote this grant, the Emerging Famers Conference took place in January each year, this changed in 2022 to November. Therefore it will not be possible to attend 3 times because the grant cycle will end before the 3rd conference. However, we used this as an opportunity to get New Roots farmers and graduates to a local conference organized by our organization, Cultivate KC. After the Emerging Farmers Conference, attendees expressed interest in attending similar events that are more targeted towards growers in the Kansas City region. This challenged our program staff to think about inclusivity and language access more critically and we were so grateful for that! In total 9 farmers attended the conference. The focus this year was on Farm Bill Advocacy (with representatives from NSAC present) and the breakout session topics focused on: climate resilience, soil health, tools and equipment, and mental and physical well-being of farmers. This was a great opportunity for farmers to learn, connect, and engage.

The plan is to attend the Emerging Farmers Conference again in 2023.

The 2022 Field Trip was to Redfearn Family Farm in Independence, Missouri. This farm was a great example of Season Extension - the Redfearn Family has a year-round CSA - serving 200 families over the winter months and 400 families during the main growing season. They use high tunnels, caterpillar tunnels, over-winter crops, and outdoor low-tunnels to grow produce year-round. Farmers were able to see what season extension looks like on a small, diversified local vegetable farm. 

TBD

TBD

In 2022 we had a successful farmer leadership team of 4 farmers that represented 3 language groups. Throughout the year we worked together and figured out ways to improve the functionality of leadership team. Moving forward into 2023 we have 3 Farmer Leadership Team members (2 returning, and 1 new member) representing 4 language groups! As per the leadership team, terms begin Jan. 1 and end Dec. 31st. The leadership team is excited about taking on more communication responsibilities in order to get messages passed along to other growers in their language groups. 

In 2023, we are hoping to bring together New Roots farmers in KC with the growers of the Global Greens program in Iowa.

In 2024, we are hoping to bring together New Roots farmers in KC with the growers of Big River Farms in Minnesota.